- The cyclists were living the dream but yet the dream’s a nightmare...

Emma O’Reilly, who blew the whistle on Lance Armstrong's use of performance enhancing drugs, has told Daybreak Armstrong had been in touch ahead of his Oprah interview.

She said she had had a missed call and text from the shamed cyclist on Sunday night ahead of his appearance on Oprah Winfrey. Armstrong who was stripped of his Tour De France titles admitted to Oprah overnight that he taken performance enhancing drugs.

Emma revealed to Daybreak presenters Aled Jones and Helen Fospero, that despite Armstrong’s admission she did not feel vindicated. She said:

“I’ve never ever felt vindicated and I can never think of another word to use but I hate that word because it suggests almost that there was some vindictiveness pre-it, but I had only ever spoken about it because I hated seeing what some of the riders were going through because not all the riders were as comfortable with cheating as Lance was and you could see when they went over to the dark side and personalities changed and I always felt it was an awful shame.

“These were young lads in the prime of their health, prime of their life having to make this awful decision – kind of living the dream but yet the dream’s a nightmare and that was always why I’d spoken out it wasn’t about Lance it was about drugs in cycling.”

Armstrong and his team attempted to discredit Miss O’Reilly claiming she was an alcoholic and a prostitute. Speaking about these claims, she said:

“One of the things that really, really annoyed me about that was the conversations Lance and I would have would be almost about... because when I was in cycling there weren’t many women, so supply and demand meant I could have had a good time, if you know.. and I didn’t I behaved and Lance and I would have conversations about that and so he knew that wasn’t my style then to go out and use that it’s such an age old argument too. It’s so unsophisticated to use that kind of argument to try and discredit someone.”

When asked about whether Armstrong had tried to make contact with her to apologise, Miss O’Reilly said he had texted and and called her. She added:

“I thought you know what one part of me ‘oh this is great’ and the other part of me you know ‘what! - the little runt’ , you know I could clip him across the back of the head, drag him up to Manchester to apologise to people close to me and eyeball them and apologise to them!”

When asked whether Armstrong, who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned from the sport for life, had paid for what he’d done, Miss O’ Reilly said: